Discover the Best Restaurant Bill Book Format for Customer Support

Restaurant bill book format for Customer Support

What defines great restaurant customer service? I'm going to tell you all about that in one second. Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin – author, speaker, chef, restaurateur, and the founder of therestaurantboss.com as well clickbacon.com. And what defines great restaurant customer service? I hear this all the time. I get phone calls all the time from clients that tell me Yelp reviews are saying that they don't have great customer service, they need better customer service, they’re getting complaints about customer service, and the first question I ask is, “Why don't you tell me what you think great customer service is?” and I'll hear things like, “Well, my staff doesn't really answer the phone great, or they should never say no to a customer, they need to be more friendly, they need to be more attentive to details,” and while that all encompasses customer service, except for the “you should never say no to a customer” part, I don't believe in that at all, there are times you should definitely say no to customers. There are specific ways we do it, but don't ever train your staff to never say no to customers. Anyways, back on track here. So, all those things are great. Those are skills. Those are specific items to train on and you should. You need to train your staff to be more attentive. They should do table check-ins. They should be looking at the table. They should be checking up on them. There should be a great greeting when they walk in the door. There should be a great greeting when they answer the phone. They should be friendly, but a lot of that comes from very specific training, and then, of course, who you hire. My wife and I recently went to lunch at a deli here in town, and the woman at the cash register was so nice and wanted to help so bad but she was lacking any kind of, like, normal social skills. So, she would ask us a question and then would go on and on and on and on after we answered for, like, literally 3 or 4 minutes, and wasn't picking up on the social cues that this conversation was over. You can't train on that. That's just a bad hire, and nothing against that woman but she just probably shouldn't be doing that. So, back to what defines great customer service. I want to wrap this up for you and put a little bow on it really quickly here. We can define great customer service in one statement. One clear statement defines great customer service, everything else that we do adds to this, but the way that you provide great customer service in your restaurant is by exceeding your guests’ expectations. That's it – exceeding your guests’ expectations. Now, how we do that is a little more detailed, but, just remember, in order to exceed your guests’ expectations, the first thing you have to do is know what your guests’ expectations are. Then, all you have to do is go 1% one percent above their expectations. So, one quick example I like to give when I'm talking about this concept of exceeding your guests’ expectations is, imagine you have a very busy lunch restaurant. When customers come in for lunch, at the host stand, ask them one simple question, “Are you folks in a hurry? Do you have a meeting or do you have to get back to the office by any particular time?” If they say, “No, we're just here to relax,” seat them on one side of the dining room. If they say, “Yeah, actually, we're in a hurry. We have to get back by a certain time,” seat them in another part of the dining room. So, all the people in the hurry are on one side. All the people who are just there to relax are on the other side. Your staff knows this, your managers know this, and now when they come to the different sides of the restaurant, like, if someone asks for something, they know which side they need to react more quickly to, which side they need to be a little faster with. Also, when your server greets any table that's sat on the side that they're in a hurry on, the first words out of your server's mouth should be, “The host informed me that you're in a hurry. Let me know what time you need to get out of the restaurant and I'll do everything in my power to make sure that we do that for you.” They should suggest items that can cook faster. Someone orders something that takes a long time, they should say, “Hey, I don't really think we're going to be able to get that done in time for you.” They should say things like, “I know you're in a hurry. Let me get your drink order now, and when you come back, be ready to give me your food order. That way I can get you out of here on time.” That is great customer service. That is exceeding your guests’ expectations. I hope you enjoyed this week's video. Next week, I'm going to teach you my number one tip for exceeding your guests’ expectations. Have a wonderful day. I want to thank you for watching that video. If you can do me three really quick favors right now, very quick. The first is, if you haven't already, will you subscribe to this channel? In a moment, some things are going to pop up on your screen, some buttons, and one of those buttons is going to be subscribe. So, whether you're watching this on my channel or on YouTube or on your phone, just stick around for one second and you're going to see a big subscribe button. If you haven't already, could you please subscribe? Two, if you haven't liked this video, will you go ahead and click the like button? Actually, don't just click it. Will you smash that like button and tell the world that you really enjoy this, because the way that I can continue to bring you all this great free training is for my message to expand, for more restaurant owners and future restaurant owners around the world to be watching this, and so the way to do that is to like my video. So, again, if you're watching on YouTube, there'll be a place for you to like it, or if you're back on my website, there'll be a place for you to like that. So, smash that like button for me. 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I'm always rotating that, so take a look at that, some free tools, but if you're new to my channel, if you've never seen my videos before, there’ll also be a spot for you to watch a video that'll kind of introduce you to what I do here at The Restaurant Boss and at clickbacon.com, and tell you about what we do and how you can get more involved and how you can get more free stuff and all that. So, the button should be coming in by now. Go ahead and click on those, and have an absolutely wonderful day. Thank you so much.